Genesis Index  

First creation story
Second creation story, fall of man
Hitting the reset button with Noah; the tower
Noah's sons
Abraham's exploits, the promise, and an intimate meeting with God
Hagar, and more of Abraham's exploits
A son! Abraham's big finish
Isaac has sons, one is a cheat and runs off with Abraham's promise
Jacob has kids; he and Laban pull some fast ones
Jacob comes to know God through a wrestling match, returns home.
The setup: Joseph is sent to Egypt
Jacob's family reconciled, saved, and relocated.
Jacob's blessings, Joseph's last words
Genesis: literal history or metaphor?

As I finish reading, taking notes on, reflecting on, and posting about each book of the Bible, I plan on writing a post or two reflecting on common issues people have with that book, along with a post summarizing and linking to all the posts about one book. This is the first of the summarizing posts and is related to Genesis.

Genesis, a mix of origin myths and ancestor stories (among other things) is the first book of the Bible. It is very long and its content is very foreign to a modern Western culture. However, it is still very purposeful and thoughtfully themed, with a thick thread that is easy to follow. This thread revolves around God's beautiful creation, the fall of that creation into corruption, including the corruption of man, and God's calculated first steps in returning the creation to harmony, especially as his plan involves one man, Abram, and his son, grandson, and great grandsons.

Parts 1 to 3: The Creation of Earth

The first story in Genesis is a creation myth that is poetic and orderly and beautiful. God makes the world almost like he's stretching a canvas and then painting a picture on top. Humans are created in God's image and their purpose is to rule earth and multiply on it. Everything is great.

The second story is another creation myth, this time it's mostly about mankind's creation. A man is made, and is put in a sweet garden to work, and can live forever, eating from the tree of life. He needs a friend so after he names all the animals God makes him a wife. They're naked but it's a good thing. God warns them not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil or else they'll die.

A serpent tells the woman that if they eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, they won't die, but they'll be like God, knowing good and evil for themselves. The woman and her husband eat that fruit, and it only goes down half like the serpent. Yeah, they know good and evil, but it makes them ashamed of their nakedness. Plus, they do end up dying. Not only that, but God puts a curse on a ton of stuff, from the serpent to childbirth to marriage to farming. Things don't heal over time as one of their sons actually murders the other one. One of HIS descendants murders two people and is proud of it. Yikes.

A third story is then told (see above linked post) in which it is reiterated that God made man in his image. Generation after generation passes, and eventually man is totally corrupt and evil. God is sorry he ever made earth, except for one righteous guy, Noah.

This is the story of the creation of earth, according to Genesis. I also wrote a post in which I talked about my thoughts on the literal vs. metaphorical interpretation of the Genesis, and that is worth checking out at this point.

You can see two main things in these first two posts / three stories: God is consistently good, just, powerful, and creative. Meanwhile his creation starts out great, but becomes evil through the acts of Adam and Eve and through the passing of generations.

Parts 4-6: Noah and his family

At this point the story turns to one man: Noah. He is the only person left on earth worth a lick. God reveals his plan to Noah for restoring harmony to earth: he'll destroy absolutely everything with a flood, but will save Noah and his family and some animals in a big boat. It all goes down like God says, and at the end, Noah worships God and God makes a promise to never do this kind of thing again. He tells Noah's family to fill the earth like before, and to stop killing each other.

After that, Noah's family line is traced, and just as humans begin filling the earth, they decide they'll make a name for themselves and not fill the earth by building a huge tower out of brick. They don't get too far before God spreads them all over the earth himself and confuses their languages. Noah's family line is then reiterated, right down to a man named Terah, who has a son named Abram.

So it is seen that God is still the same all-powerful God, very concerned with restoring creation to how he first made it. So he starts over. But he doesn't totally neglect man, saving one man very much on purpose and basically giving man a fresh start with his commands at the end to not murder and to fill the earth again. A few more generations pass and mankind is already fighting against this, trying to stay in one place and follow his own path. God does what he can to proceed with the plan but of course he won't destroy earth again. We end with geneologies leading to Abram, but the story leaves us hanging on what God will do next.

Part 7 - 8: From Abram to Abraham

God gets to work right away, telling a guy named Abram to move to where God shows him, telling him that HE will make Abram's name great, will bless him, give him tons of descendants, give him the land he will show him, and will bless all nations through him. Abram then has a series of exploits in which God blesses him greatly or reiterates his promises, and Noah often responds by giving God credit or worshiping him.

Eventually Abram and God share a powerful scene in which Abram doubt's God's promises of many descendants because his wife Sarai is old and barren. God tells Abram his descendants will be slaves but will come back to take the land, and as a sign, God moves a firepot between some sacrifices.

Nevertheless, Abram takes his slave as a wife because it doesn't seem Sarai will ever have a kid. God says that Abram's slave's kid, Ishmael will become a great nation too, but that Sarai will indeed have a kid. God then makes it a covenant (the blessings, land, descendants, and and blessing all nations) by giving Abram circumcision and by renaming him Abraham and his wife Sarah. Meanwhile not only is Abraham very blessed by he seems to be best friends with God, able to talk with him about anything, with God listening.

Eventually, Sarah does have a son, Isaac, and Abraham now believes God's covenant so much that he'd be willing to sacrifice his son, the son OF the promise, when God tells him to. He finds his son a wife and dies at a good old age.

Meanwhile Ishmael does indeed become the father of a great nation as well.

This part of Genesis focuses on on Abraham exclusively instead of all of mankind, and God not only makes world-big promises to Abraham, but he begins to carry them out in incredible ways and single-handedly carries Abraham from a place of pseudo-belief in what God says to a place of complete trust no matter what the circumstances. God also becomes absolute best friends with Abraham through the process.

Part 9 - 11: Isaac and Jacob

Isaac, to whom God gives the same covenant He gave Abraham (and gets even richer than Abraham), has a couple kids and accidentally hands his blessing down to the younger, deceitful one, Jacob. Jacob runs off in fear of his brother's wrath, and God appears to him, confirming that indeed he has received the covenant from Isaac that Abraham originally got.

Jacob then spends a lot of time with his Uncle, getting four wives, having 12 sons and deceiving and being deceived by Uncle Laban lots of times.

Jacob heads home with his numerous family members and possessions, but when he hears his brother is about to meet him, he panics. He literally wrestles with God all night. God blesses him and changes his name is Israel (struggle with God), telling him he will indeed be blessed and his descendants will be a great nation. His brother meets him and hugs him, and Israel returns home to his dad.

Jacob's brother is shown to have lots of kids and be blessed as well.

Throughout the stories of Isaac and Jacob, God's covenant with Abraham is passed down, so God is working through generations of people. Isaac and Jacob are both made very rich by the covenant. Jacob is given more stage time and is brought over time by God from a state of decietfulness to a state of mature trust and respect for God.

Part 12: Jacob's family

Jacob's sons aren't to nice to the favorite son of Jacob, Joseph, and long story short, he is sent to Egypt as a slave and no one knows he's alive but his brothers. He is continutally blessed in Egypt despite years of hard times and ends up basically the prime minister of Egypt. With God's help he's well prepared for a seven year famine and when it kicks in Egypt is doing great and making money off the whole world by feeding the nations.


Jacob's sons go to Egypt to get food because of the famine and Joseph recognizes him, after getting them to bring the youngest to Egypt, he is emotional in front of them and reveals himself as Joseph. They are afraid but he insists it is God who sent him to Egypt not them, so that he might save his family from starvation. Jacob is delighted to hear his son is alive and they all move down to Egypt.

Jacob, about to die, gives his sons their share of the blessing, especially praising Joseph and giving him a double share of the nation that will one day rise out of the person Israel's blood line. Jacob dies and they bury him back in the land God sent promised to Abraham (Canaan). Eventually Joseph dies but he reminds the Israelites that they belong in Canaan and that one day when God sends them back, to take his (Joseph's) bones back to Canaan with them. Then Joseph dies.

In the final part of Genesis, there is more character development as God brings Joseph's older brothers from a state of violence and deceit to humility and regret over their mistreatment of Joseph. Meanwhile God uses Joseph to save his family by bringing them to Egypt during the famine, which is just the place God told Abraham his descendants would become slaves. As the book ends, Jacob's kids are starting to grow into a nation, the Israelites.

The book ends in great anticipation, because God's covenant with Abraham, the focus on the book, are absolutely certain (because of God's character) and yet mostly not yet there. Yes, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were greatly blessed. But they are not a great nation yet (although that seems to be emerging), they're not yet in the land, they haven't taken the land, and all nations haven't been blessed (although many people comment on how blessed they are). It's like the tiny buds of the covenant are seen but there is much more to come.

I believe Genesis intends to end with that sort of mindset.